Rokurokubi

Quick facts

What the source says

A courteous household

Travelling through the mountains of Kai, Kwairyō accepts a woodcutter’s offer of shelter. Four other people greet him at the cottage. The house-master describes a ruined former life and professes repentance; the priest offers to recite Buddhist scriptures for him. That confession is the host’s own story, not an independently established explanation of how these beings originated.^{[1, mountain visit]}

The heads in the grove

Later, Kwairyō finds five headless bodies without blood or apparent cuts. Recalling a rule attributed to the book Sōshinki, he pushes the house-master’s body out of a window. In the grove he sees five heads eating worms and insects. The house-master proposes eating the priest, but says they cannot touch him while he prays. A woman’s head returns from the cottage with news that the body has been moved.^{[1, discovery and combat]}

The house-master declares that it can no longer rejoin its body and must die. All five heads attack; Kwairyō strikes them with an uprooted young tree. Four retreat. The house-master bites his robe’s sleeve and dies under repeated blows, its teeth still fastened to the cloth. The others have reunited with their bodies when the priest returns to the cottage, and run away.^{[1, discovery and combat]}

A trial and a burial

At Suwa in Shinano, the head hanging from Kwairyō’s sleeve brings his arrest on suspicion of murder. An elderly magistrate examines the smooth neck and red characters on its nape, identifying it through a rule he attributes to Nan-hō-ï-butsu-shi. Kwairyō is cleared. Later a robber buys the head and robe to frighten travellers; learning the story near Suwa, he fears the spirit, returns to the deserted cottage, and buries the head alone because he cannot find the body. He commissions a tombstone and a Ségaki service. The ending attributes the tombstone’s continued existence to the storyteller; it does not supply a verified monument location.^{[1, trial and burial ending]}

Description and capacities

The group initially looks human. The detached heads speak and move through the grove; one woman’s movement is compared to a bat, without implying wings. The enraged house-master’s eyes widen, hair bristles, and teeth gnash. The narrative places the goblins’ power within the hours of darkness, but does not describe sunlight destroying them.^{[1, mountain visit and combat]}

The displaced body prevents reunion in this plot. The three bounces and rapid death described in Kwairyō’s remembered book rule are not enacted as such: the house-master attacks him instead. Prayer’s protection is asserted by the head; a direct attempt to attack the praying priest is not shown. No fixed dimensions, lifespan, hereditary condition, or exclusively female identity is established.^{[1, discovery and combat]}

Source realm: the mountains of Kai

The cottage, garden, and grove in Kai form the encounter’s setting. Suwa in Shinano is the later place of judgment, not the household’s location. These are landscapes in Hearn’s traditional tale, grouped here under Folklore places. Neither the unnamed hill nor the tombstone is assigned modern coordinates, and the account establishes no separate supernatural kingdom.^{[1, mountain visit, trial and ending]}

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Themes in this tale

Hospitality conceals a threat, while the guest’s religious learning and retained martial courage enable his escape. The head changes roles from attacker to evidence, frightening prop, and object of funeral care. These are readings of this tale’s sequence, rather than universal symbolism for Rokurokubi.^[1]